Ask Lemmy

The Onion is way better than real life, especially currently.

As an animation nerd I gotta mention Shrek. As a parody of "Disney princess movies" it killed the entire genre dead.

The only time Disney tried to play the tropes somewhat straight again was the Princess and the Frog, and THAT was a major flop (though racism probably also played a part in that).

Since then Disney only made remakes or titles like Frozen that spend 70% of their runtime mugging at themselves and poking fun at their own tropes (... While still circling back to them anyway and failing to make any point or commentary)

On a less "this made a major cultural impact" note and more of a "this personally completely altered my entire sense of humour and replaced the original in my heart" -- SnapCube's Realtime Fandub Games Sonic Adventure 2

Oh oh ohohoh! Just remembered JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Very much a manga that was poking fun at contemporaries like Fist of the North Star... And while it didn't outlive or outdo them per se, it definitely gained a life of its own, continuing to this day and actually being quite influential in its own right.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is better than Hamlet. Sure, it had the benefit of an extra couple of centuries of progress in art, but I think it still counts.

Deadpool It was a parody of DCs Deathstroke, right down to the guy's name Slade/Wade.

Amish paradise. I find the song better than the original(s)

Idiocracy started as a parody, and is now becoming a reality.

Blur - Song 2 was intended as a parody of American rock and is laden with nonsense lyrics. It's their most known song in America by a wide margin and might even be their most known song globally.

Woohoo

Does it count if I only read summaries of both works, not the works itself?

"A true story" is a parody on the "travelogue" that were popular in ancient Greece, like Homer's Odyssey and Illiad. 800 years later, they had a resurgence in the Roman Empire, like when Virgil wrote the Aeneid. Still 200 years later, A True Story was written by Lucian.

In the preface, Lucian complains that the genre was ruined by authors making up unbelievable tales to trick their dumb readership. So he thinks it better to just admit that all he says is a lie.

The story goes on how Lucian then set sail across the Atlantic, got caught in a storm so terrible it blew him to outer space, and meet the all-male civilisation that lives on the moon, who carry their children through the calf of their leg.

Lucian and his crew return to Earth, get swallowed by a whale, explore the Islands of the blessed, see the Sinners being punished (the ones who lied in their stories being punished the hardest) and reach a distant continent. Lucian says what happened there will be shared in the sequel, which a comment describes as the biggest lie of all.

Bugs Bunny far surpassed It Happened One Night. His manner of speaking, saying “doc,” and his obsession with carrots are a direct parody of Clark Gable’s character from that movie, but modern audiences don’t realize he’s a parody at all and instead assume the carrot thing it based on rabbits’ real dietary preferences.

Yugi Oh The Abridged Series

Spaceballs.

Galaxy Quest!

Weird Al's White And Nerdy, so much better than Ridin Dirty.

Airplane parodying the airliner movies like Zero Hour

Dr Strangelove parodying atomic terror movies like Fail Safe

r/TheDonald. If I remember right, it started as a meme sub before he actually ran, then it was overtaken by actual supporters.

Pretty much everything from Weird Al.

Blazing Saddles. It killed the western genre for a long time because of how well it parodied them

Hot Fuzz is the best buddy cop movie I've ever seen.